Making Sense of the Vietnam Wars: Local, National, and Transnational Perspectives

Paperback | April 17, 2008

Making sense of the wars for Vietnam has had a long history. The question "why Vietnam?" dominated American and Vietnamese political life for much of the length of the Vietnam wars and has continued to be asked in the three decades since they ended. The essays in this inaugural volume of theNational History Center's book series "Reinterpreting History" examine the conceptual and methodological shifts that mark the contested terrain of Vietnam war scholarship. They range top-down reconsiderations of critical decision-making moments in Washington, Hanoi, and Saigon to microhistories ofthe war that explore its meanings from the bottom up. Some draw on recently available Vietnamese-language archival materials. Others mine new primary sources in the United States or France, Great Britain, the former Soviet Union, China, and Eastern Europe. Collectively, these essays map theinterpretive histories of the Vietnam wars: past, present, and future. They also raise questions about larger meanings and the ongoing relevance of the wars for Vietnam in American, Vietnamese, and international histories of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

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Making sense of the wars for Vietnam has had a long history. The question "why Vietnam?" dominated American and Vietnamese political life for much of the length of the Vietnam wars and has continued to be asked in the three decades since they ended. The essays in this inaugural volume of theNational History Center's book series "Reinte...

Mark Philip Bradley is an Associate Professor of History at Northwestern University. Marilyn Young is a Professor of History at New York University.

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Table of Contents

Mark Philip Bradley and Marilyn B. Young: Introduction: Making Sense of the Vietnam WarsPart One: American Intervention and the Cold War ConsensusMark Atwood Lawrence (University of Texas at Austin: Explaining the Early Decisions: The United States and the French War, 1945-1954Seth Jacobs: "No Place to Fight a War:" Laos and the Evolution of U.S. Policy toward Vietnam, 1954-1963Gareth Porter (independent scholar): Explaining the Vietnam War: dominant and Contending ParadigmFredrik Logevall (Cornell University): "There Ain't No Daylight:" Lyndon Johnson and the Politics of EscalationPart Two: The Coming of War in VietnamSophie Quinn-Judge (Temple University): Through a Glass Darkly: Reading the History of the Vietnamese Communist Part, 1945-1975Edward Miller (Dartmouth University): Vision, Power and Agency: The Ascent of Ngo Dinh Diem, 1945-1954David Hunt (University of Massachusetts, Boston): Taking Notice of the EverydayHeonik Kwon (University of Edinburgh): Co So Cach Mang and the Social Network of WarPart Three: War's End and Endless WarsLien Hang T. Nguyen (University of Kentucky): Cold War Contradictions: Toward an International History of the Second Indochina War, 1969-1973Michael J. Allen (North Carolina State University): "Help Us Tell the Truth about Vietnam:" POW/MIA Politics and the End of the American WarDavid W.P. Elliott (Pomona College): Official History, Revisionist History and Wild HistorySuggested Readings

Editorial Reviews

"Examining the topic from local, national, and international perspectives, this important volume provides a superb introduction to the most recent scholarship on the Vietnam War."--George Herring, author of America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975